TURN ON YOUR HEATING FOR THE FIRST TIME AFTER SUMMER – CHECK LIST – Plumbing Tips

TURN ON YOUR HEATING FOR THE FIRST TIME AFTER SUMMER – CHECK LIST – Plumbing Tips5

This video will guide you through a brief checklist of things you need to do to your heating system when turning it on for the first time that winter. We cover bleeding air from the radiators, making sure the TRV or radiator valve is not stuck and the lockshield is open to making sure the circulating pump is OK and the motorised valves work OK.
Add inhibitor to a heating system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nmCkxjZoPc

Today we’re here to have a very quick look through the little checklist that you should do when you turn on your heating system for the first time after a balmy British summer of rain and sort of twenty degrees, you know when it’s just not very nice. The temperature outside at the moment has dropped down like below zero degrees or whatever and it is getting cold. So, people are thinking about turning on their heating systems. If you’re hard, and you haven’t turned it on yet, and you just put another jumper on. If you’re like me, you’re thinking about wacking on your heating now And this is basically a brief checklist of the things you should do. Anyway, I’m going to divide the checklist into two things. Firstly, just the really simple stuff. Any kind of house I know what DIY can do with really simple tools. And then the slightly more advanced bit. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not really, really difficult but you sort of need slightly a bit more knowledge or, you know, cojones to have a look at the certain things we’re going to do. So, firstly, let me just go over the really really basic start bits.

So, number one on your list of things to do is to get yourself a little radiator bleeding key like the one I’ve got here. There are a few different types. And just go around each one of your radiators in the house and bleed the air out of the top of the radiator. You’re probably going to find there’s not a lot of air or there’s none at all. I mean, that’s brilliant. It means the heating system’s been well-inhibited, which is a treatment you put in the water to stop air happening. If you do have loads of air, might be a good idea to give your plumber a quick call once you’ve got all the heating working. And just say, mate, can you pop around and wack some inhibitor in the heating system. Or, you can click on the link that’s appearing now that will show you how to put inhibitor in your heating system. We’ve also left a link to that in the description below. So the usual way to bleed a radiator is to make sure that both valves at each end of the radiator are fully open. And then, grab your radiator bleed key and just open that. Open the key up. You’ll see which end it is on the nice cross end here. Just open that up like that. And as you can see, we’ve got water coming out here straightaway. Once you’ve bled any air out of the radiator, the next thing you’re going to need to do is get a pair of grips.

Remove the radiator TRV, if you’ve got one. And then use the grips to wiggle the pin underneath the TRV and make sure that that’s free. Once you’ve done that, go to the lock shield end, which is the other end of the TRV on the radiator. Completely close the lock shield by turning it clockwise. And then give it half a turn to three quarters of a turn anti-clockwise, and that radiator is set up and ready to use. Do that to every radiator in the house and then we can move on to the next (mumbles) we need to do before turning your heating system on. So once you’ve got that done, obviously, you know if you’re letting water out of the radiators, if you haven’t got an F and E tank in the loft, which will automatically refill the heating system, then, you’re going to need to use the fitting lube on the boiler or on the pressurized kit to just top up the water level in the heating system. If you’re not happy doing this bit, then get a plumber in for you. I mean, it is really, really easy and I’ve left a link in the video description below as well as how to pressurize a heating system as well, we’re using that method.

So, the next thing you’ll do is go to your room thermostat. If you’ve got one like this, make sure it clicks So make sure that that’s working. And then really we’re at the end of the beginner’s department, okay. You’ve gone around every radiator. You’ve effectively done a thing called balance the system, whereby you’ve shut down the lock shields and just cracked them open a little bit. What that does is evenly distribute flow throughout the whole heating system, so all the radiators get nicely warm. We’ve made sure that the TRVs aren’t stuck shut because sometimes they can be shut for the hold of the summer, and then not spring on again. And also, we’ve made sure that there’s no air in the heating system. The next few things I’m going to show you are very simple.